Project XIII: The Awakening
Cold.
That was the first thing I knew — not felt, but knew. It didn't sting or burn; it sank. Deep. Into skin, into muscle, into bone. A silence so heavy it became sound.
There were no memories before the cold. No name. No sense of who I was. Just the distant hum of machines, the rhythmic beeping that wasn't a heartbeat but an imitation of one.
Then came the light.
White. Blinding. Sterile. I opened my eyes — or maybe they opened for me — and the ceiling came into focus. Metal rafters. Surgical arms suspended above me. Tubes snaking down into my chest. My vision trembled, like the air itself was shivering.
And then — voices.
"Neural activity is stable."
"Motor function returning."
"Incredible. The graft accepted the transplant seamlessly."
'Graft?'
The words barely made sense, but my brain — whoever's brain this was — started connecting fragments. My head felt heavy, detached, like it didn't belong to the rest of me. I tried to move. Pain answered — sharp, immediate, electric.
"Restrain him!"
Metal clamps locked around my wrists and ankles, humming with hydraulic strength.
"Don't fight," one of them said softly, like he was speaking to a frightened animal. "You'll tear the stitches."
'Stitches…?'
I turned my head as far as the restraints allowed. My neck was swollen, discolored — the faint outline of sutures disappearing beneath layers of new, almost glossy flesh. I didn't remember the injury. I didn't remember anything.
A face appeared in my line of sight — a man in a heavy lab coat, round glasses fogged by the condensation of his own breath. His voice was smooth, deliberate.
"Fascinating, isn't it?" he said. "The human brain, preserved, moved, reattached. You are witnessing the first success of trans-cerebral integration."
I stared at him. I didn't have the words to ask what that meant. But the look in his eyes told me everything — this wasn't medicine. It was engineering.
"He doesn't seem aware," another scientist murmured. "Should we proceed with neural calibration?"
"Yes," the first answered, "but carefully. His mind is adapting faster than expected. The serum is already taking hold."
The serum. I could feel it. Something in my blood pulsed with unnatural rhythm — heavy, steady, precise. It was like fire in liquid form, moving through me, rewriting whatever I used to be.
They removed the clamps hours later. My muscles ached, trembling under their own weight. Every motion sent shocks through my nervous system — but I could feel the body adjusting, compensating, growing more efficient with every second.
"Begin physical evaluation."
They handed me a set of metal grips, heavy enough to crack bone. My fingers wrapped around them easily. I squeezed. The steel groaned, bent inward like soft clay.
"Force output increasing."
"Neuromuscular efficiency at one hundred and twelve percent above baseline."
"He's still climbing."
I didn't understand their excitement. All I knew was the sensation — every cell in my body reacting to command, every movement smoother than the last.
They made me walk next.
One step. Unsteady. Then another. The floor was cold under my bare feet. I looked down and saw pale skin, scarred and marked with faint silver lines. A stranger's body.
"Postural correction is naturalizing," one said. "He's balancing autonomously."
"He's learning."
'Learning…?'
That word echoed somewhere deep inside me. The way they said it — like I was an infant mimicking movement. I felt anger before I knew what anger was.
But I didn't show it. I just kept walking.
The man with the glasses — I would learn later his name was Zola — watched me with fascination. His voice had the calm certainty of someone who thought himself immortal through the work of others.
"You're doing beautifully," he said. "Two halves, now one. The brain of precision and the body of endurance. You are more than either ever could have been alone."
I didn't respond. The words didn't reach me. They just floated through the sterile air like dust motes under the harsh light.
Then came the real tests.
They placed me in a steel chamber, cold as a morgue. Cameras watched from every corner. A mechanical voice counted down.
"Phase One: Reflex."
Targets slid from the walls — metal discs, drones, moving faster than I could think. But my body didn't wait for thought. My hands moved on instinct. One strike, two — each blow precise, devastating. Metal shattered against my palms.
"Remarkable," someone whispered through the intercom. "No hesitation."
Then — guns. The sound of bullets slicing through the air. My vision blurred; I moved before I even understood the movement. Shots missed. I didn't dodge consciously — my body knew where they would land.
One of the doctors said on speaker ——
"His reaction time is beyond measurable range."
Another followed ——
"Adrenal response suppressed entirely."
"He's calm. Perfectly calm."
Calm? I wasn't calm. I was empty. There was no fear, no hesitation — just obedience written into the marrow.
Hours turned into days. Days into weeks.
They made me run until my bones should've shattered. They made me lift until steel bent under my hands. They froze me, burned me, cut me open to watch how fast I healed. Each time the wounds sealed — smooth, bloodless, seamless.
"Regeneration instantaneous. Cellular structure continuously reformatting."
"It's not healing," one scientist murmured, awe-struck. "It's adaptation."
Adaptation. That word came back again and again. Like it was all I was — a project designed to adapt until there was nothing left to fear.
'Adapt… obey… survive.'
I repeated those words silently in my head like a prayer. They were all that kept me anchored.
But something was wrong.
In the silence between tests, when the lights dimmed and the machines powered down, I began to hear it — a faint rhythm under the hum of electricity. A beat. Slow, distant, alive.
At first, I thought it was the serum. Then I realized it wasn't coming from me.
It came from somewhere else — faint, far away. A heartbeat that pulsed not in my body but in my mind. Every time I heard it, warmth bloomed in my chest — foreign, unwanted, but comforting.
I didn't understand it.
When I asked about it — my voice hoarse, alien even to myself — Zola only smiled.
"Residual synchronization," he said. "You share a biological link to your predecessor. It's normal."
'Predecessor?'
He didn't explain. None of them did. But when I pressed further, he only said —
"You're not meant to remember. You're meant to function."
And so, I did.
I fought, trained, obeyed. I became their weapon, their silent proof of concept. They recorded every breath, every twitch. My body became numbers. My mind became code.
But at night, when the facility was quiet, and frost crept along the reinforced windows, I would touch the scar on my neck — the seam that marked where someone else ended and I began — and wonder:
'Whose body did you give me?'
The heartbeat would answer — faint, almost kind.
I never remembered her name.
But something inside me did.
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I am very greatful if you have read upto now for my novel so feel free to comment your thoughts on it especially since I'm a new authour.